Tim Flannery, chairman of the Copehagen Climate Council says the publication of documents taken from the British CRU suggesting some global warming data may have been manipulated only “reveals the depth to which climate skeptics will go to influence the course of events. … It does nothing to throw doubt on the climate science”. It is the last act of desperation by heretics standing in the way of the big green doctrine. But the main response to suspcions that the whole thing has been cooked up has been to simply ignore criticism and focus on enacting new taxes and obtaining further pledges. Efforts to place the world under a Green Framework are well underway and nothing is going to stop it now. Next stop: Copenhagen. The AFP reports:

the United States is to announce concrete targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as pressure mounts on polluters to find a formula for success two weeks ahead of a crucial climate summit. …

An emissions target from the United States, the world’s number two polluter and wealthiest country, was essential for the success of the conference, according to United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer. “The key issue here at the moment is the United States. My sense is Obama will be in a position to come to Copenhagen with a target and a financial contribution,” he said in Brussels on Monday.

The sole roadblock may be the American voter. The global warmists privately fear that the US Congress will stand in the way of providing any real teeth to the whatever concessions the Obama delegation is prepared to make at the Danish capital. The Americas Society held a public discussion attended by a number of insiders to assess what would happen next. According to Rubén Kraiem of Covington & Burling the Green allies in the US Congress had best push through the needed measures before 2010 because the prospects of success after the elections are small.

According to Kraiem, the United States will not allow “what happened in Kyoto to happen again,” and the Obama administration will not commit itself to anything without domestic political consensus. Since the U.S. Congress won’t pass climate legislation before the Copenhagen conference, the only window it will have is early 2010, before the midterm elections in November. Politically, it will be “virtually impossible” to pass climate legislation in the United States close to or after the elections, said Kraiem. He is encouraged by the work of Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to craft legislation with bipartisan support, and he believes that the United States will eventually commit to an international legally binding agreement. But he cautioned that the U.S. commitment would be far short of global expectations. …

In closing, the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Annette Heuser reemphasized the short timeline the United States has to pass domestic cap and trade legislation. She also echoed the call for a concrete timetable for 2010 in order to avoid letting policymakers “off the hook.” (emphasis mine)

Keep up the pressure. Keep up the momentum. The Obama administration appeared to be doing just that by trying to get as close as it could to a “final treaty” in Copehhagen without action from Congress. According to the Politico:

“It would be a mistake to conclude that the international community’s failure to reach a final treaty in Copenhagen is due to a lack of domestic legislation in the United States,” said a senior White House official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. …

Until now, the United States has resisted setting a specific goal for greenhouse gas reduction, arguing that the international negotiators cannot preempt Congress. And expectations for the talks have fallen over the past few months, a change some blame on the inability of Congress to commit to a concrete target. …

“I think we go into Copenhagen with a very, very strong hand,” said one of the officials. “We have done I think more than anyone could have expected us to do in a short time.”

The targets, said Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, will demonstrate U.S. leadership on the climate issue and encourage other nations to make firm commitments.

“The Obama administration will be able to say to the world we are no longer going to preach temperance from a bar stool. We are now ready to begin to make a commitment,” he told POLITICO. … But White House officials also acknowledged that the international negotiators would have a stronger position had Congress already passed a climate bill.

The Obama administration had hoped to have Cap and Trade in their pockets by now but unexpected resistance to health care reform delayed their advance. “We would have preferred that health care be done a long time ago, and we’d be having an energy debate today,” one official was quoted as saying. But they may still get their chance to pass legislation before voters get a chance to elect a new Congress. Now is the time. Joseph Romm of the Energy Collective says Obama is trying to undo years of climate inaction by the Bush Administration and needs to make hay while the sun shines.

Yes, the U.S. target is quite wimpy and inadequate compared to the other big players (see “Climate negotiating positions of top emitters“), but it is the best the American political system can do right now — given that conservatives led by the Bush administration blocked any action by the U.S. for a decade, including reneging on a 2000 campaign promise to cap utility CO2 emissions. We simply have a bigger hill (of our own making) to climb back down. … I take this White House announcement to be another clear message that, yes, they will be insisting on an economy-wide cap-and-trade bill in the Senate (see Carol Browner strongly backs economywide, bipartisan cap-and-trade bill: “Slicing and dicing isn’t going to work. It’s time to finally have comprehensive energy legislation in this country”).

In the world of Cap n’ Trade the “science” is already settled. Not a sound or rumor of the CRU hack has seeped into that hermetic tower. All that matters in high councils is how much — in taxes and contributions — the US will impose on itself.

Here’s a video showing dancing in Copenhagen this summer in preparation for the summit.

To state the obvious: This will be the first “target” among many. The object is to suck America dry and then leave her starving by the side of the road. What in heaven’s name did we undertake the long and hard travail of WW2 and the Cold War for? Just who “won” in the end?

Seriously, We must reach a watershed moment where the left is called out on their designs across the board and they are rejected, marginalized or jailed.

This “international consensus” of “climate change” power players cannot even add up to 3 million people, useful idiots aside. At their core, I bet they are less than 100k. It should be easy to crush them.

We must get past the illusion that they have the power over us we imagine that they do. No longer can we pussyfoot around with the left, international or otherwise. This has to stop. They now strike at our very hearts. “Environmental target” will ruin us. Letting foreign powers “set targets” is treason pure and simple.In a same world, this would be grounds for impeachment. It would be grounds for imprisonment.

What is wrong with the citizens of this Nation? Why are we so supine before such immoral and incompetent lunatics whose evil designs are so clear and transparent.

It just is beyond belief. The sheer insanity of it. The sheer stupidity of it.

This nation, this civilization, is being destroyed by a pack of spoiled, ill-educated, boomer brats who have not had so much as one productive hour in their lives. They could not successfully run a hotdog stand in Times Square if they had the only one in all of New York City. And ho they do hate us. How they just lust to destroy her. It is like watching a gang rape.

Obama is repeating what has gone on in the EU the last 15 years, and with disastrous results there. The tranzis are doubling down and going for broke.

It has nothing to do with “the environment” and everything to do with destroying the one impediment to their design of a new dark age where all live in slavery and poverty but themselves: The free p[eople of America. What monsters these people are.

Really, the science is the reason it MUST BE DONE NOW! The more reliable models of prediction, which have nothing to do with carbon emissions, are forecasting a cool down for a decade or two. The green movement central command communist types need the major reductions today so they can claim credit for cooling the Earth… the Sun be damned.

If only elected officials on the right in the U.S. would hit back on the junk science and call it was it is. The wimp factor here is most frustrating.

Calm down. I don’t think you mean that the way it reads, but if you do just remember that jailing people for what they believe cuts all kinds of ways.

As the Left makes itself more and more ridiculous it will attract more and more ridicule. Ridicule, combined with the sheer lack of money to pay for grandiose schemes is something the Left cannot overcome, even when their man is elected President of the United States of America.

I guess one should not be surprised. How many doctorates are based on phony research or at least some BSing on the data? Many, I would say. I know one PhD. who told me she had to resort to faking up some of her data.

The AGW church accuses us skeptics of being flat-earthers, I dare say they are medieval church looking to extract indulgence fees from us.

A local talker was expressing disappointment in the non-story that is the CRU hack. What did he expect? There is a double standard and had this CRU been associated with the right, then we would bombarded with the usual cliches of “speaking truth to power” and whistle blower.

That line about…”the United States, the worlds number two polluter”… lept out at me. Of course, for the longest time, we were number one (rah rah!). Now it’s number two, second, I am certain to China.

So who is making demands on China? Who is even talking about China?? For ever it was, “We (or ‘you’) are the number one problem, you have to set an example”…. etc etc. Well, what about now?

This is part of something notable – that the politics of “global warming” are entirely about the West, one hundred percent. In the West, there is never discussion about the obligations of non-Westerners, and outside the West, there is never discussion of of the issue other than “what the West should or should not do”.

You think the Brazilians are talking about the evironmental problem that is China? That the Indians are concerned about Mexico’s environmental obligations?

No way. While there might, might mind you, be a kernel of truth to the theory, as a political movement it has been hopelessly corrupted by the enormously powerful self-loathing suicidalists of Western Civilization, and thus whatever is said toward the end of supporting the green movement must be assumed to be false until proven otherwise. And now the current “provers” that we once relied upon cannot be so relied upon, given their neo-religious outlook on the matter for the past ten years.

Someone pointed out on an earlier thread that Cap & Trade is just a hugely magnified version of one of the trading schemes practiced by Enron. This is rich: the very kinds of people that excoriated Enron and gave us the Sarbanes/Oxley law that sent corporations fleeing overseas now want us to do an ‘Enron’ orders of magnitude larger than the disastrous original, and world-wide.

One catastrophic house-of-cards scheme after another, and all of them emptying our pockets.

The political classes in France and Italy and now in the UK are able to keep control on the masses since the masses are content to operate in the black economy and take lots of vacation time. They are not breeding (the Muslims are breeding living off the welfare state)and the older citizens are depressed.
The Wall Street tycoons want to fleece the permit trading using the same quant models that brought on the toxic wastes. GE is looing to make a killing on their windmills.
Our political class is convinced that they can squeeze the middle class and keep them voting for liberals by giving them little entitlements they way the buy off academics with grants.
The politicos do not seem to understand that the Federal and State bureaucracies are incompetent and that the productive part of our economy is getting hurt. They expect to rule using votes from miseducated young people and workers with no or little skills, a sort of American Mexico.

If we’re only bound by a treaty that’s not ratified by Congress, a future President can repudiate it. It’s a lot harder to get out of a law than a treaty. So, I am less disturbed by Copenhagen than by the cap and trade bill.

The revelations of fraud as revealed in the emails and files hacked from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, Great Britain, will not mean a thing. The emails show the scientists rigging the data to make it appear that man, and not the sun, is responsible for what little global warming there has been over the past one hundred years, but neither Al Gore nor the climate Nazis will be dissuaded or disturbed by the facts, since he and they were undoubtedly privy to the scam from the beginning. No, the hockey stick guys will fight tooth and nail, claiming with every exhaled carbon dioxide breath that global warming is real and that the emails are faked. They will not give up easily, for careers are at stake, and for some, like Al Gore, it isn’t a career that’s at stake, but vast sums of money. Do not expect the climate Nazis to give up their fevered dream of running the world’s economies and peoples through the soft tyranny of the European socialist elites. And above all, do not expect Al Gore to do a mea culpa.

The climate is changing, we’re told by Al Gore
Regardless of facts that it’s not
And even with emails, the scandal du jour
He’ll not change his mind by a jot
The icebergs are melting, the bears in decline
The seas are all rising a lot
And even if proven the bears are all fine
He’d not change his mind by a jot
The air is polluted with carbon you know
It’s hard to know just what we’ve got
But even if proven the air’s fresh as snow
He’d not change his mind by a jot
He’ll not change positions on climate, we’re told
He says that it’s gonna get hot
And even if proven we’re gonna get cold
He’d not change his mind by a jot
For climate’s the answer to money for Al
He sees it as dough for the pot
The climate change scam is for him a cash cow
So he’ll not change his mind by a jot

Quoted from Wretchard’s essay:
(Tim Flannery) says the publication of documents taken from the British CRU suggesting some global warming data may have been manipulated only “reveals the depth to which climate skeptics will go to influence the course of events. … It does nothing to throw doubt on the climate science”.

This quote reveals the depths that the corrupt advocates will plumb to inflict this global rent seeking on the US, among others. Perhaps Obama is doing us a favor. If the country is truly ‘broke’ (in the financial sense) then there will be nothing left to loot by the looters in Copenhagen.

If the leaked documents, e-mails, etc from the British CRU are the tip of the iceburg, if more ‘secret’ documents and data can be outed, if more truth can be revealed, if, if, if….

It is still a long road to hoe to change the minds of the committed, and convince millions that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scientific heresy. So yes, the blather that comes out of the upcoming Copenhagen summit is less meaningful than the Senate voting for Cap and Trade. When the doubters and skeptics have as much media leverage as the warmists and tranzis, then we might get somewhere.

That line about…”the United States, the worlds number two polluter”… lept out at me.

This is a canard, isn’t it? Per capita, Americans pollute less than any major industrialized nation or even most of the lesser ones. If we were judged on a per capita basis, we would be among the cleanest. It is because of our sheer size that we are listed as a major ‘polluter,’ as well as a major ‘consumer.’

WE invented modern environmentalism, and WE had the first EPA (under Nixon, no less!), and WE did something about pollution long before any of our tormentors and accusers. WE had the first SEVERAL “Earth Days” before any of those who would drag us down began having theirs, much less making them official. We’ve NEVER had pollution as ghastly as that of China or Russia, and even Japan and parts of western Europe have outdone us for environmental ‘crimes.’ Our ‘Love Canals’ have almost invariably turned out to be exaggerated, whereas Japan’s mercury pollution was horrendous. I’m sick to death of and spitting mad at all these sanctimonious Johnny-come-latelies who had to learn from us, and whose past historical behavior makes us Americans look like choirboys by comparison.

Oh yeah, and one more kick in the ribs of our tormentors: Rachel Carson was American — just reminding the sanctimonious that the patron saint of their delusions was from the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Great, now my co-workers think I am completely nuts. As I scrolled down past the dancing eco-weenies to that iconic frame from The Seventh Seal I gave forth with a loud guffaw, the problem being that I was on the phone with the District Attorney at the time. Fortunately for me he had placed me on hold moments earlier and did not hear me.

Richard where do you come up with these ever-so-perfect juxtapositions?

Back on topic, the science hasn’t mattered since AlGore got away with the Big Lie and the One-Worlders spotted the opportunity to grab some REAL power. I think Al was just looking to swindle a chunk of change, it took full-blooded commies to spot potential for a globe embracing tax and power system pushed through for “all the best reasons”. The media (those relentless harbingers of the doom-of-the-day) bought in and enabled the madness. Now no one is permitted to question the Green Gospel without facing the Eco-Inquisition.

The problem with the American citizen is that they are too busy with the next big TV show/movie/celebrity. We grew up (I’m Gen X) with everything we could want or need at our fingertips. Very few of my generation have ever had to sacrifice anything, other than those who join the military. My best buddy is completely ignorant of any of this. His wife is even worse as she voted for Obama. Her reason? McCain is “too old”. Her face is buried in her computer screen playing World of Warcraft literally from the time she wakes up till the time she stumbles off to bed. She gets drunk every single night. My neighbors who are mostly younger than me are oblivious to what is happening as they are only concerned with who has the best pot. My ideal solution would be to gather all conservatives/anti-socialists in one place and go to war on the rest of the idiots who inhabit this nation.these people cannot be reasoned with and to them we are the true enemy. I’m sick of trying to compromise with these people because it has become apparent to me that they espouse compromise while working to enact their tyrannical agenda in the dark.

As our host suggested a few months ago, Obama’s troops just might be the equivalent of Bonaparte’s army in Moscow after they were permitted to sack the city. Democrats are finding it just as hard to fight when clutching loot with both hands. May the withdrawal be long and painful.

Why do the CRU leaks have so little effect on the AGW discussion? Here is a guide to kinds of ignorance, via Catholic Encyclopedia:

“So far as fixing human responsibility, the most important division of ignorance is that designated by the terms invincible and vincible. . . . When ignorance is deliberately aimed at and fostered, it is said to be affected, not because it is pretended, but rather because it is sought for by the agent so that he may not have to relinquish his purpose. Ignorance which practically no effort is made to dispel is termed crass or supine.”

Stephen @ #6: “I don’t think you mean that the way it reads, but if you do just remember that jailing people for what they believe cuts all kinds of ways.”

No doubt, but I’m reminded of what John Milton wrote:

“more just it is, doubtless, if it comes to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a great number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves.”

One of the things that has always interested me about the English Civil War (or “Revolution” if you prefer) is that the Royalist faction tended to be much younger than what became the Parlimentary party. In other words, the decades of Stewart propaganda about the “divine right of kings” had finally done its work; it was the old guys who remembered the 1629 Parliment that formed the core of the “rebellion.” The question before us is whether we can resurrect the concept of “liberty” for a generation that’s never heard that word uttered except ironically.

The environmental movement is the victim of its own success. Nobody talks about ‘acid rain’ anymore. Our emissions are far lower per capita and per unit of GDP than they have been since we started burning coal — the emissions of which are scrubbed of SO2 and other real pollutants. Our cars emit through catalytic convertors, the main places with emissions problems are geographic sinks like the LA basin, hemmed in with mountains where auto emissions have trouble being diffused into harmlessness.

So does the environmental movement shuffle off the scene, their goals achieved? No. They move the goalposts. In airbone pollution, the focus shifts from SOx and NOx to CO2. Because it is so hard to get rid of CO2 in a modern society, their relevance is secure if they can win the argument that CO2 is a pollutant, and therefore you have to keep listening to them. The enviros have apparently given up on particulate emissions controls in Europe, the diesels that are their main source of transport for the most part would not be viable vehicles here because there are at least 8 states that follow the emissions controls of CARB that would make those engines illegal. They have put their chips on CO2 as the lever to move the world.

In the field of chemical pollutants, the focus has again shifted from agents like PCBs and insecticides like DDT to bisphenol A, and other chemicals that are supposedly dangerous at the parts-per-billion level or lower. Outlawing bisphenol A and the micropollutants that are the current source of handwringing will only result in the discovery of the heretofore unrecognized role of nanopollutants, surely as day follows night.

The vehemence with which the AGW crowd clings to carbon dioxide is an example of the effort necessary to get from an environment 95% of the way they want to see it to 99.99% congruent with their perceived nirvana. The first 50% was pretty easy, and the next 45% took some effort, innovation and sacrifice. I would not expect the AGW crowd to quit if there is another Fallen Angels-style ice age. Without carbon dioxide, they have no soapbox from which to preach, no gains to call their own and measure against their predecessors, who honestly have achieved a tremendous amount.

The shame of it is that they cannot accept that they have likely won as much as they can, and be happy with the cleaner world the West inhabits. Bjorn Lomborg seems to be this kind of environmentalist, willing to put aside absolutism in the pursuit of other goals. For this heresy he is roundly condemned by the True Believers.

Only totalitarian government action will suffice to get them to their goals but I’m pretty sure that even if this can be achieved, like some of the founding members of Greenpeace they will see their intellectual inheritors as having ‘gone too far’.

It becomes a jail sentence when “beliefs” are used as justification to lie to government agencies for the purpose of obtaining public monies. If it occurs up to and over a ten year period it falls under the RICO act. Also if a person’s assets and income has been damaged by a RICO conspiracy:

“There is also a provision for private parties to sue. A “person damaged in his business or property” can sue one or more “racketeers.” The plaintiff must prove the existence of a “criminal enterprise.” The defendant(s) are not the enterprise; in other words, the defendant(s) and the enterprise are not one and the same. There must be one of four specified relationships between the defendant(s) and the enterprise. A civil RICO action, like many lawsuits based on federal law, can be filed in state or federal court.[5]
Both the federal and civil components allow for the recovery of treble damages (damages in triple the amount of actual/compensatory damages).”

I don’t think AGW zealots would be able to ascribe 20 years cooling that waits us all to their good works. Even the most draconian measures incapable to bring down the present levels of CO2 or even significantly slow their further build up. Discrepancy between rising CO2 concentrations and cooling climate will sink in, and all this hoax will collapse. In ten years from now environmentalists will look like idiots, and public will be really angry. The whole world ruling elites will be so hated and despised that a series of revolutions, like 20 years ago, will roll across Europe and bury EU.

I don’t think AGW zealots would be able to ascribe 20 years cooling that waits us all to their good works. Even the most draconian measures incapable to bring down the present levels of CO2 or even significantly slow their further build up. Discrepancy between rising CO2 concentrations and cooling climate will sink in, and all this hoax will collapse. In ten years from now environmentalists will look like idiots, and public will be really angry. The whole world ruling elites will be so hated and despised that a series of revolutions, like 20 years ago, will roll across Europe and bury EU. If collapse of European socialist project will result from this whole stupid climate story, it will worth it.

The environmental movement is the victim of its own success. Nobody talks about ‘acid rain’ anymore.

Acid rain is produced by the same pollutants that Obama’s crackpot ‘science’ advisor (John Holdren) has proposed pumping into the stratosphere in volcanic quantities to induce ‘global cooling.’ To me, one of the most outrageous aspects of AGW is that not only has it subsumed other environmental issues to its agenda, but the more extreme proposals of AGW advocates involve causing environmental catastrophes as ‘emergency measures’ to ‘save the planet.’ It’s kind of like the old ‘we had to destroy the village in order to save it’ gambit, only we ain’t talking mere villages here.

The shame of it is that they cannot accept that they have likely won as much as they can, and be happy with the cleaner world the West inhabits. Bjorn Lomborg seems to be this kind of environmentalist, willing to put aside absolutism in the pursuit of other goals. For this heresy he is roundly condemned by the True Believers.

Interesting observation, and I agree. Ironically, it’s the same phenomenon confronting race hustlers and militant feminists. In all these cases they’ve made all the progress that’s realistically going to be made and can be absorbed by a society ruled by the vagaries of human nature, yet these fanatics will persist.

My understanding is that stratospheric sulfur aerosols are simply mimicking of a known source of global cooling — volcanic eruptions. A couple of those would be handy right now, but would not change the underlying debate.

The SOx pollution in the troposphere (e.g., closer to ground) caused localized acid rain. The geoengineering of stratospheric sulfur aerosols would not be expected to produce acid rain, if properly placed the aerosols would last for years in the stratosphere, and would not be expected to materially affect the acidity of the rain.

Your still photo of the penultimate scene from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal is apt.

The main point of that marvelous film (that I have seen more times than any other, save Casablanca) is that the Knight only found corruption and death while trying to save the world and discovered his significance only when saving the lives of a single family.

And BTW, I expected Senator Kerry to be one who would want to push through a climate bill. Did I read correctly or did you not also include Senators Lieberman and Lindsey Graham? “He is encouraged by the work of Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to craft legislation with bipartisan support, and he believes that the United States will eventually commit to an international legally binding agreement.”

“The Obama administration had hoped to have Cap and Trade in their pockets by now but unexpected resistance to health care reform delayed their advance.”

The Senate leadership put Barbara Boxer in charge of the Cap and Trade bill. Barbara Boxer is an imbecile. Nobody with good sense would count on her to do anything. I suspect the Senate leadership plan on the Cap and Trade bill failing. They’ve setup Boxer to take the blame.

The SOx pollution in the troposphere (e.g., closer to ground) caused localized acid rain. The geoengineering of stratospheric sulfur aerosols would not be expected to produce acid rain, if properly placed the aerosols would last for years in the stratosphere, and would not be expected to materially affect the acidity of the rain.

Thanks, Darren, for clarifying that. However, it would still be a gigantic engineering boondoggle that, if it proved ‘effective,’ would give us catastrophic global cooling, as did Krakatoa and the 1818-19 Indonesian eruption. Both caused a ‘year without summer’ in their respective eras.

Environmentalism handed bureaucracies a totally new domain which they could regulate and tax. Of course they can’t tax nature itself. Gaia doesn’t respond to a summons from the Inland Revenue Service or the IRS. But they can tax human activity however indirectly it may affect the Earth.

By appointing themselves tax collectors for the earth they’ve created a new source of sovereign power. Once it was the “People” in whose name they acted. Now they can act in the Name of the Clods, the Mud and the Holy Dirt.

The real genius of environmentalism is that it provided people who wanted to do something with the excuse to do it. There is nothing like appealing to man’s worst nature. It is always there looking for an excuse for gratification. The bureaucrat only needed a pretext to increase his power. Once it became clear that “climate science” was going to provide that, then the way was clear for not just one environmental regulation but a whole plethora of them.

Thus “climate change” set up a counter-revolution in human affairs and a new license for tyranny. That’s a pity because a sensible environmentalism would have been good for everybody. Maybe somebody should rewrite the Tragedy of the Commons in Shakespearean terms. What did the witches say about the arrival of the trees?

Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.

And the unexpected happens, the enemy army comes cammied up in tree branches.

Let every soldier hew him down a bough
And bear’t before him: thereby shall we shadow
The numbers of our host and make discovery
Err in report of us.

And Macbeth realizes that nature itself is coming to assail him.

As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.

Yet it is not nature that marches to the castle, but men bearing hewn branches. And so it is with the environmentalists, many of whom are the same old Red tyrants clad in the green of Birnam Wood.

Re. #14.
“If the leaked documents, e-mails, etc from the British CRU are the tip of the iceburg, if more ’secret’ documents and data can be outed, if more truth can be revealed, if, if, if….” No number of “ifs” will change religious fervor. Chnage the paradigm instead.

So, there is good reason to believe that the global cooling fears of the 70′s were well founded due to the effects of U.S. SO2 and NO* emmisions. As American industry began scrubbing for these pollutants, and then Russian industry began shutting down, the greenhouse effect of CO2 became more influential. With unregulated Chinese and Indian industry taking up the slack the effect of SO2 and NO* aerosols have become more influential again. Given an approximately decade feedback loop, this potentially explains the recent stall of “global warming.”

To me, the lesson is that CO2 is not THE overriding forcing that AGW alarmists insist, and that atmospheric geoengineering (ie. terraforming) might pose a much cheaper, quicker and more effective means to counter CO2 greenhouse effects than systematic attempts to reduce CO2.

Darren is also spot on in his discussion of the 95% solution vs the 99.9999% solution. We see this with arguments about defining acceptable levels of arsenic and other toxins in drinking water. In an ideal world, we would like there to be none. Recently the U.S. EPA tightened the allowable concentration of arsenic from 50 parts per billion to 10 ppb, to the dismay of environmentalists who wanted a limit of 1 ppb or less. The Bush administration was denounced for wanting to kill children by coddling polluters, despite the fact that natural background concentrations of arsenic range from 2 – 5000 ppb. Requiring every small water provider to reduce concentrations from an affordable 50 ppb to a more expensive 10 ppb was a hardship, but new technologies have sprung up to make it doable. Bridging the gap from 10 ppb to 1 ppb is not a linear exercise, it’s exponential. As the instrument detection limit of arsenic, or other toxin, is approached the cost of each incremental part per billion to be removed increases 10 fold. This parallels the experience of scrubbing SO2 and NO* from smokestack emmisions and certainly predicts what we will see with any systemic, comprehensive effort to remove CO2. I think that it actually underpredicts because CO2 is so chemically inert. The first 20% – 50% might be relatively painless, but each increment of CO2 removal after that will confront a ever steepening cost curve.

It would be difficult to characterize catastrophic global cooling as ‘effective’. Think Pinatubo more so than Krakatoa or Tambora. Pinatubo produced measurable decreases in global temperature even during the increasing temperatures of mid-1970s-late 1990s, without the no-summers issue.

Geoengineering is not something that anyone would consider until there are already crop failures, etc., and given the many tools of lawfare it is unlikely to be done by any one country unilaterally. It can be started, measured and calibrated to the desired effect. Given the difficulty and cost involved in stratospheric injection, overdosing on sulfur aerosols is unlikely to occur — though with any government-run (or UN-run) project, disaster is always a possibility.

And speaking of crop failures, if you want something else to worry about, Google ‘Ug99′.

To me, the lesson is that CO2 is not THE overriding forcing that AGW alarmists insist, and that atmospheric geoengineering (ie. terraforming) might pose a much cheaper, quicker and more effective means to counter CO2 greenhouse effects than systematic attempts to reduce CO2.

After spending way too much time looking at the Hadley hack, and finishing “Going Rogue” (which I recommend), last night I picked up Richard Rhodes’s, “The Making of the Atom Bomb” and started to read it, thinking to change the subject. Well…

About 24 pages in, he explores Michael Polyani’s seminal thinking on the nature and philosophy of science, and it was absolutely gob-smacking how clearly the CRU emails and their authors violate everything Polanyi said was central to the practice of science and the community of scientists… their dishonesty, stifling of dissent, creation of a false (apparent) consensus through intimidation, no transparency… you name it, they violated it.

A couple of chapters later, Rhodes looks at Neils Bohr’s personality and problems with decisions and commitment, and the related ways he dealt with ambiguity, and how that all predisposed him to see what others might have but could/would not: that highly predictable, mechanistic Newtonian physics could not explain what experiments were revealing at the atomic and subatomic levels, but a probabilistic scheme based on Planck’s quanta and Einstein’s photoelectric effect could. And I take from that some lessons about scientists ultimately being guided by (if not slaves to) their emotional needs, and those who need attention or need to be scared seem to gravitate toward AGW.

Yes, one could say that those who are by nature complacent gravitate to AGW-skepticism, and I imagine there are some who fit that bill, but in the end, who is hiding data from whom? Who is threatening journal editors? Who is manipulating the IPCC process and then bragging about it?

At work here in Switzerland, I have been crowing about how the climate fraud has finally been exposed. One Brit I work with immediately went to the BBC website where they talked about the server hacking but did not even mention the contents of the emails. A Swiss colleague refused to discuss the issue and dismissively brushed it off as just another right wing lie. He has long refused to even consider that temperatures have been falling because he reads the NZZ (Neu Züricher Zeitung, what passes for conservative media here) and they have never discussed it. He also thinks that since he reads the economist (firmly in the warmist camp for several years now) that he is a conservative and has a balanced view of the world.

This is the price we are paying for the left’s “long march through the institutions”, and it illustrates how effective their control of the narrative has become. I have given up pressing the advantage made through this small victory, and have decided that this socialist malaise will just have to run it’s course. There is nothing that can be done until the euro-sheeple finally have their rendevous with reality.

(Sacramento, CA – November 24, 2009) The California Air Resources Board (CARB) today released a preliminary draft regulation (PDR) outlining key concepts the agency is considering as it designs a comprehensive cap-and-trade program to reduce global warming pollution in the state.

“On the eve of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month, California’s ‘leadership by example’ is an important sign that meaningful action is occurring at the sub-national level in the United States and around the world,” said Derek Walker, director of the California Climate Initiative at Environmental Defense Fund, which co-sponsored AB 32. “California is taking another important step on the path to a clean energy future that will create economic opportunities and environmental benefits for all Californians.”

Cap-and-trade is a proven, effective mechanism for cutting pollution quickly and at the lowest cost, a particularly important consideration given the economic downturn. In the 1990s, a cap-and-trade program incorporated into the federal Clean Air Act achieved 100 percent compliance in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain at just 20 to 30 percent of the cost forecast by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“California is once again leading the world in tackling a complex, but critical environmental and economic challenge,” concluded Walker. “We are showing the world the power of state leadership in promoting innovation, while helping combat the most dangerous impacts of global warming.”

The weak point of the environmental movement is that that like most scam religions it is really about money. The Green movement is really about Green. The sooner we skip the fire-and-brimstone and get to passing around the pledge plate the sooner we get to see what the nitty-gritty is about.

They want your money.

And they’re going to get it.

My favorite scene in Die Hard is when the dreamy-eyed Japanese executive realizes that Gruber’s terrorists aren’t fighting for a cause. It’s a heist. And Gruber almost laughingly says, “well what did you think it was?” That’s what this whole global warming business is about. Stick ‘em up. Reach for the ceiling. Manos arriba. Here’s that immortal exchange from the movie.

TAKAGI: This is what this is about? Our building project in Indonesia? Contrary to what you people think,we’re going to develop that region… not ‘exploit’ it.

HANS GRUBER: I believe you. I read the article in Forbes. Mr. Takagi, we could discuss industrialization of men’s fashions all day, but I’m afraid my associate, Mr. Theo, has some questions for you. Sort of fill-in-the blanks questions actually… (He asks for the code to access vast sums of money)

TAKAGI: I don’t have that code…! You broke in here to access our computer?!? … You want…money? What kind of terrorists are you?

The normal kind. The sort that go to strip shows and believe its justified to rob the infidel. The kind that wants you to give them your last dime. The Washington Post describes how a former coal worker in enlightened Germany lives.

A kilowatt of electricity costs three times as much here as it does in the United States, supercharged with high taxes to discourage use and to help fund renewable energy development. Meanwhile, a 50 percent “eco-tax” has sent the price of gasoline soaring to $8 a gallon. To manage costs, the family of three unplugs all their appliances but the refrigerator at night, avoids driving and limits steam baths — a favorite German custom.

“We have no choice,” said Andreas Pokropp, a former coal refinery worker. “We have to be green, even if we can’t afford it.”

Yet the Pokropps have also reaped rewards from Germany’s fight against global warming. After years of looking for steady work in this moribund coal region, Mariola Pokropp found it in 2006 at Eickhoff, a 145-year-old manufacturer of mining equipment that has reinvented itself in green times, retooling its assembly lines to make 30-ton gearboxes for wind power generation. It is part of a heavily subsidized industry that has generated hundreds of thousands of jobs, paid for by consumers through higher energy bills.

Ram through Congress a bill supported only by a temporary political majority of lawmakers, “before the next elections”? And this antidemocratic bill is just going to remain on the books forever?

First: vote the rascals out.
Next: repeal the antidemocratic bill, and repudiate any Senate treaty signature. The EU is welcome to operate on a ‘ratchet’ basis where voters may only ratify Lisbon, and may never undo that mistake. The USA must be independent of that sort of political chicanery, and abide by the wishes of its voters.

I guess the only redeeming feature of California’s economic suicide is that their borders are still open, and the only ones paying their confiscatory taxes will be the ones that choose for whatever reason to live there. I wonder if they even understand the difference between markets based on free choices and markets without them.

Here in Texas, we have our own grid and lead the nation in wind energy production, despite virtual absence of the same a decade ago. There are incentives in the form of federal tax policy to be sure, but there is also an unsurprising practicality and lack of NIMBY/BANANA thinking. There is little state bureaucracy to interfere, and lots of private landowners happy to lease their wind rights. It’s like an upside-down oil well for these people.

Good luck to those you still in the People’s Republic of California. I’m sure your utility company-controlled home will sense you moving out, and turn out the light for you.

THE magnitude of the absurd is upon us… When the two most populated countries in the world have already dismissed out of hand complying with any of the (small diminutive world’s) demands that emissions be curtailed by this or that amount by this or that timeframe what you have is street theater of the toxic brained.
Indian and China have so stated and have given no indication they intend to back off of the technologies that brought the United States into a position of world leadership using the technologies of the 1950’s. Why should they? Are they going to get a nasty note from Copenhagen that will shake them to their very core? Will Luxenburger force march it’s whatever it has to those countries and force a showdown? Will Algore winning another bogus prize add sufficient moral suasions to the argument to curtail China and India?

And what of the several thousand a day volcanic eruptions that eructate forth millions of tons a day of emissions be stopped by all the nitwits of the world holding another “harmonic balance day” or better yet offering up their bodies in a fiery self immolation knowing that will certainly stop nature from being Nature,
And yet people who take themselves quite seriously and are desperate for us to do likewise will conduct and perhaps with obamas help succeed in producing the next great “WE ARE THE WEIRD, WE ARE THE LOONEY” moment in entertainment history. Expect to see the usual Hollywood types crooning into a mic while basking on the slopes of Haleakala crater.

Back around the turn of the century I heard an interesting news report. A decade or more before, a man had been charged in a paternity suit and found liable for support of the baby. New technology enabled the DNA of the child’s real father to be identified – and it turned out not to be the guy who lost the paternity suit and had been paying child support for some time.

He went back to court – and the court upheld their earlier ruling, the reasoning being “Well, someone has to pay to support the child, and we don’t know who the real father is, and you have been doing it, so you will keep on doing it.”

It is not at all hard to imagine a day in the future where AGW is disproved in an undeniable fashion, and the Powers That Be say “Well, that’s fine, but we have all these people employed and all sorts of industries relying on stopping carbon dioxide emissions, so we have to keep right on with the taxes and restrictions.”

The federal income tax was intended to be a temporary measure to support US operations in World War I. Still waiting for the war to start over that one. You can argue that after nearly a hundred years we have a much longer list of grievances, but still the giant slumbers. The US population rolled over in its sleep in 1994, and may fart and scratch a little in 2010, but if it’s war you want you’re going to need more.

It’s amazing what the general mass of people will tolerate when you tell them they’re being patriotic and generally awesome for doing it. All you have to do is provide them a plausible way to explain away their otherwise unexplainable behavior, get them to the neurotransmitter ‘reward’ release that accompanies the resolution of internal conflict and they’ll go back to sleep.

17. Ashen, No need to go to the mattresses, simply stop the hand outs and make everyone responsible for their own welfare. Once the government cheese stops they will rediscover their need to be productive- or they will starve. Either way it works.

34. & 46. Wretchard, absolutely, it is all about the money. The EU is after our money for the same reason the US government allowed individuals to sue big tobacco even though they had been in charge of regulating the business for years: they had it (the money). The only way to stop this ridiculous slide toward socialism (and total meltdown) is a taxpayer revolt in some fashion. My dream revolt would be states who are self sufficient (mostly red states) to simply opt out of the federal system. This would be very revealing- the “welfare states” would lose all their cachet and would have to resort to begging or simply go belly up. If we allowed states to fail the way business used to, before the scourge of bail-outs, there would be a clear choice presented to the people of what works and what does not. It will come down to something like this eventually, the only question is whether it will be an armed conflict or political.

Thank you, Charles! I was reading through this thread, waiting for *someone* to point out the reality that Cap’n'Trade is dead in the Senate, dead in this Congress, and given the way that next years elections are shaping up, dead forever. There is *no* *way* this is passed during the political primary season, and no way it is passed during the summer runup to the fall elections, either. Karaim and Hauser are correct, there is a time limit to getting this thing passed -but they don’t seem to realize that the time available is already spent! It needed to be done by this fall; *anytime* in 2010 is too late. They just can’t bear to admit that to themselves yet.

This is dead not just because Republicans don’t want it, but because quite a few powerful Senators want it killed as well. Robert Byrd, for one, has vowed to kill the bill if it penalizes coal production at all. Midwestern Senators oppose it because it would vastly raise electricity costs in their states, and their constituents know it. Not only can this bill not get 60 votes, it probably can’t even get 50. With that kind of opposition, it will never be brought to the floor and will die officially at the end of the session.

Now, what does it mean that Obama is going to announce a “real target” for emissions cuts? Just more idiocy on the part of our Fool-in-Chief. He’s treating this just like any other campaign – the audience wants to hear a number, so he’s going to give them a number, anything to make them happy. Who cares that he has no power to enforce it? That’s tomorrow’s problem, not today’s. Who cares that this is just going to prove to *every* player on the world stage that Obama’s promises are empty, that he will say anything to get through a meeting and forget all about it as soon as he walks out? That’s tomorrow’s problem, too. After all he will be able to say he meant well, and it was just that dastardly Congress that foiled all of his wonderful plans.

Because, after all, it’s only the good intentions that matter, right? No one expects actual results, do they? There isn’t anything besides happy talk required to lead a country, is there?

I think over the next year Obama is going to find out that even his most committed ideological allies are going to begin to realize that they can’t afford to work with a liar and a fool. Obama seems to have that perverse gift of being the kind of man who rewards and builds up his enemies, while tearing down and doing damage to all of his friends and allies, great and small.

Sooner or later virtually everyone is going to realize it’s much safer and much more rewarding to be one of Obama’s enemies than it is to be one of his friends.

If you vilt not conform to our plan, ve vill take strong measures against you!

Too much Carbon is killing us. We must control it via an economic system of carbon “cap and trading”…a redistribution system that helps save the planet.

Our new seal for the new monetary system will be the Three C’s, representing the Carbon cycyle:

. . . . . C . . . .
. . . . C. C. . .

All who buy and sell, must now do so with carbon credits.
All who buy and sell, must now bear the seal of the new currency.
All who do not bear the seal will not be able to buy or sell.

Carbon, the basic unit of all life.
Carbon, the new unit of currency.
Carbon, the cycle/circle of life.
Carbon, the foundation for a new world religion.
Carbon, the way to peace and justice/equity.
Carbon, atomic weight/number = 6

If these con men were truly worried about CO2, they would plant more trees – earth’s most effective scavengers of CO2 – resulting in increased O2 production through photosynthesis. The results of Cap and Tax will be to rob future generations of more than money but their hopes and dreams. Something is truly rotten in the state of Denmark. The Copenhagen con men must be stopped.

“This is why Sen. James Inhofe told Sen. Boxer the other day “We won! You lost! Now get a Life!” ”

I recall that the Senator tossed off the “We won, you lost, get a life” line without all of that emphasis in rather tongue-in-cheek style, as that manner of speech and reasoning is stock-in-trade of the Left, and now “we” get to say it. It provoked quite the reaction in Senator Boxer, suggesting that some people can dish it out in earnest, and that cannot take it in return, even as a mild tease.

“Sooner or later virtually everyone is going to realize it’s much safer and much more rewarding to be one of Obama’s enemies than it is to be one of his friends.”

I ought to fear this man, given what he wants to do to our country, but I just don’t. Punishing enemies is one of the many things he’s not good at. Maybe back in Chicago he could count on bad things magically happening to his enemies without his having to do or say much. That’s not how it works in the POTUS job. If he can’t inspire fear he’s missing some tools from his toolbox.

A little too smug, 48. Darren: The “wind energy production” you brag about was pioneered decades ago by poor little ‘ol Californians. Just google the Whitewater and Tehachapi Wind Farms.

Good luck to you, too, as your once proud state – where the total tax load is higher than you seem to know – slowly turns into what you now despise. By that time we here on the best coast might finally have wrested the ship of state’s helm away from the useless idiots in Sacramento and begun the process of re-forming what once was a delightful republic. Maybe we can get it right this time and split us into thirds.

CBS reporter takes a look at an even more interesting — and damning — bunch of CRU e-mails. These e-mails are exchanges regarding the shoddy and unreliable state of the computer models, the monitoring stations, and the lack of organization and oversite in some countries’ climate monitoring activities. VERY interesting reading. Again, note, this is from CBS.

An excerpt from the raw CRU files:

I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation – apparently linear as well. As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless. It also means that we cannot say exactly how the gridded data is arrived at from a statistical perspective – since we’re using an off-the-shelf product that isn’t documented sufficiently to say that. Why this wasn’t coded up in Fortran I don’t know – time pressures perhaps? Was too much effort expended on homogenisation, that there wasn’t enough time to write a gridding procedure? Of course, it’s too late for me to fix it too. Meh.

If these con men were truly worried about CO2, they would plant more trees – earth’s most effective scavengers of CO2 – resulting in increased O2 production through photosynthesis. The results of Cap and Tax will be to rob future generations of more than money but their hopes and dreams. Something is truly rotten in the state of Denmark. The Copenhagen con men must be stopped.

On a number of posts at different forums I’ve pointed out that one of the tragedies of the AGW hysteria is that it has pushed aside more urgent and real environmental issues. Maintaining forest cover, including reforestation where feasible, and dealing with the health of the oceans make a lot more sense as far as providing a margin for Earth’s natural carbon sinks and heat sinks.

PECK
Well, because I’m curious. I want to know
more about what you do here. Frankly, there
have been a lot of wild stories in the media
and we want to assess any possible
environmental impact from your operation.
For instance, the storage of noxious,
possibly hazardous waste materials in your
basement. Now either you show me what’s down
there or I come back with a court order.

VENKMAN
(he’s had it)
Go ahead! Get a court order. Then I’m
gonna sue your ass off for wrongful
prosecution.

Hey, any state that elects Reagan twice, gives birth to Victor Davis Hanson and provides a home to Thomas Sowell has plenty going for it. I’m concerned for my conservative brothers and sisters behind the Palm Curtain, is all. Your state government seems intent on crushing the very industriousness and innovation for which California is justifiably famous. The story of the demise of Clark Foam, a manufacturer of surfboard blanks, seems to be a cautionary tale.

I have no doubt that CARB will adopt its Cap & Trade proposal pretty much no matter who the governor is, and whether or not it is adopted nationally. The costs will be passed on to the residents of California, while the nebulous benefits will accrue to…whom, precisely? I know California leads the nation in energy efficiency, and that’s a great thing. My house, built originally by an electric company executive, is extremely efficient and I certainly grasp the concept. It may be possible to duck most of the cap & trade issue through great personal efficiency, but any cost you pay is too much.

I was aware of the pioneering wind energy programs in the Altamont Pass and elsewhere, and again, good on ya’ for stepping out and showing it could be done. Since 1999 California has increased its nameplate capacity for wind energy by 50% to about 2400MW. Texas has increased its wind energy by about 6000% in that time, to 7907 MW, with more to come. You have us beat on solar, for sure — assuming the state and feds will let anyone actually build and operate on desert land. Heaven forbid that someone discovers an endangered lizard on the land.

All great states need great rivals, and California is that for Texas. You’re always welcome, and if you ever get sick of the oppression, check out Austin. The western part looks a lot like the East Bay, only without the Bay — or the faults, for that matter.

I quite agree. But go visit the Midwest USA, say central Oklahoma. Trees all over the place. Before the coming of the Dreaded White Man the buffalos et’em all up before they got knee high to a grasshopper. Same in Kansas and Texas – still pretty open, but lots of trees where human habitation has settled down.

In Florida we put out the lightning-caused fires that would burn the trees down. The net result is that if you want to go clear an acre of land on Cape Canaveral you have to clear TWO more acres of land to return it to its natural state, the way the scrubjays like it, as a form of environmental remediation.

I have no doubt that there are more trees in the US now than there were 500 years ago.

49erDweet…we here on the best coast might finally have wrested the ship of state’s helm away from the useless idiots in Sacramento..

Stop blaming “Sacramento.” Or “Washington.” It’s not the town, it’s you who elect and send the locusts here to do your bidding (and looting) that are the problem. As the lone humorist wrote, dearie, the Parliament of Whores is you.

We should keep in mind the emotional, non-rational, and arguably unconscious motivations and drives that made the global catastrophe scenario so acceptable to so many.
“Global warming” is a catch-phrase for something that has hung over mankind for millenia: the notion of a universal catastrophe (think Noah) that overwhelms the earth and all who live on it. One of the more recent versions of of this scenario is the “global nuclear holocaust” of the 1970s.

The psychology of the attractiveness of such narratives is obscure to me–I’m not a psychologist–but I can recognize mass hysteria when I see it, and the people who concocted this hoax can see it too.

The real question is why they did it. I’m not referring to the various monetary/political gains that would come from “being right” in such massive global predictions, but rather the psychological “income” that comes from doing such a scam successfully.

A brief version of my answer is “the desire for power.” Imagine the “power” wielded by scientists who believe–and much more important, make others believe–that they and they alone understand and therefore control the destiny of the whole planet.

For my money, this is where the true center of gravity of this global scam rests: they know there is fool born every minute, and over time that makes for a lot of fools. If you’re a scientist of the peculiarly scummy sort as the global warming set seems to be, think of the pleasure it must give you to know that you–YOU!–have the power to make so many people afraid, and make them in turn listen to you and take you seriously.

This is not “bad science,” or at least not bad science only: this is the desire to play God.

Dear 71. Micha Elyi:, I think I was referring to the legislator-locusts in Sacramento and not the sweet folks who live in the city like yourself, but thanks for your point. And literary reference. And it wasn’t me who voted for them, btw, but it was some of my neighbors and I wickedly take delight in reminding them of that sometimes.69. Darren:. Your invitation is ironic. If in 2006 we could have beaten the real estate crunch we’d now be living in Round Rock.

Back to the point. The CRU hack and now the threatened NASA lawsuit by CEI might be indicative the AGW’s “Berlin Wall” is beginning to crumble. We live in interesting and challenging times. Stand clear but be ready to pick up the pieces.

Why all this wailing and gnashing? Cap and trade is not going to pass…too many Dem’s from energy producing states. BC sometimes sounds like a whiners’ club. Buck up…it aint the end of the world. The more successful the Dem’s are prior to 2010 elections, the more anger and backlash that will be generated, with the end result of more conservatives elected in 2010. Even pontificating assholes like Larry Sabato (who contributes to Dem campaigns despite his “non-partisan” reputation) are readjusting their forecasts to account for the swing against the Dems. Whatever they pass can be repealed, whether healthcare reform or cap-and-trade.

These AGW regulation and tax policies are devices to transfer power and wealth from the American taxpayer to EU (former Common Market) bureaucrats. In less PC times Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister described these people. Yes Minister on the EEC.

The typical Common Market official is said to have the organizing capacity of the Italians, the flexibility of the Germans and the modesty of the French. He tops all that up with the imagination of the Belgians, the generosity of the Dutch, and the intelligence of the Irish.

They went on to explain why the web of regulations has been allowed to grow in Europe until Kudzu like it now threatens to choke off everything in its home and spread across the planet.

The Germans will love it, the French will ignore it, and the Italians and Irish will be to chaotic to enforce it. Only the British will resent it.

The only change is that the British are largely defanged now and only the Americans are expected to comply with these restrictions and fees while the rest of the world laughs.

2010 is gonna be about payback, and its gonna be a bigger bitch than anything the Dems currently imagine. The anger and resentment is there, but it’s not at a Habu level of explosive instability. Americans are more patient politically the people give them credit for being. Other than Tea Parties and commenting at media sites and blogs, most people just wait until the ballot to express their political feelings, as they did against Bush in 2008. In 2010, they will pay back Obama and the Dem’s for their betrayal of American majority values. Look at the Rasumussen polls for verification. See where Obama stands with white people, older people and independents. And make no mistake, Obama’s policies will be on the ballot via the Dem legislators who have “written” them.

And yet another…with unemployment highest among the 21-35 year old age bracket and predicted to persist for YEARS, perhaps the normal 15-20 year progression from liberal to conservative political philosophies has been compressed by the reality of seeing that political bullshit aint gonna help them pay their bills.

Again, maybe my glass is just half full, but i see a lot more cause for optimism than pessimism (I was filled with the latter from February until Obama, Pelosi and Reid overreached with healthcare in July).

Whatever is repudiated or repealed must be reversed by a 2/3 majority in each chamber, unless BHO rediscovers the pragmatist, Clintonesque Third-Way Democrat he purported himself to be right up until 11-5-2008. I don’t think he has it in him. As thin-skinned as the man seems to be, I don’t see him prospering with a contentious Congress led by the people he previously suggested should get out of his way while he ‘cleaned up their mess’. These are the same people he believes cannot think for themselves, who cling to religion and guns.

Cap & Trade and healthcare are his signature items. I predict he will not be a party to the repeal of either. Even a landslide election is unlikely to deliver a 2/3 majority in the Senate. The most likely outcome is a narrowly GOP-controlled House and a sub-60 Dem-controlled Senate. Neither of those options makes a veto-proof majority an option. If Obama is willing to fall on his sword, if by 2011 this is clearly a U-shaped (or L-shaped) non-recovery, there is no reason for him to retreat and claim victory. That is a feature of Democratic foreign policy, not domestic policy.

What’s he going to say, “Hey, thanks for pointing out my overreach?” It will be hard enough for him to sign the bills cancelling the rest of the Stimulus and cutting domestic spending. Our aim should be to relieve him of the burden of having to decide whether or not to dismantle the rest of his agenda by not letting it pass.

My first quote was from season 1 episode 12 and the second quote was from the earlier episode 5.

batman,Definition of European Heaven: The engineers are German, the police are British, the cooks are French, the administrators are Swiss, and the lovers are Italian.

Definition of European Hell: The engineers are French, the police are German, the cooks are British, the administrators are Italian, and the lovers are Swiss.

There are more candidates for life in Hell.
Swedish comedians.
Spanish soldiers.
Russian Diplomats.

My father once described someone as having, “the nerve of a burglar.” The people tied to the AGW scheme, and all associated schemes or other efforts to seize power based on dubious or manipulated statistics, including a financial crisis they created, are now facing down the audience and saying, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” Their replies to being challenged now boil down to a declaration that they don’t give a damn and they think they have your children anyway. They just want anyone who knows how to question them to hurry up and die. The historical example of someone making the same claim for the inevitable triumph of their vision and authority based on control over the education system and the culture invokes Godwin’s Law.

I didn’t say it had to be repealed before 2012, or that it would be. Of course I agree that it would be better to never pass such idiotic excuses for legislation. But I have sincere doubts that people will respect/follow such laws any more than they did Prohibition. If it can’t be repealed until Obama is thrown out in 2012, then it will just make that election a landslide for the Republican nominee, and then it will be repealed. After all, by that point, this week’s folly with mammograms will look like child’s play compared to the reality of Medicare cuts, forced abortion funding, real death panels, medical equipment taxes, shrinking physician population, etc. Americans are NOT Europeans and they will NOT put up with this NONSENSE like those pansies (or substitute your preferred p-word). Add the mockery of KSM showtrials, Obama’s continuing inability to act decisively about anything, continued double digit unemployment, huge tax increases – how the Dems think they can hold any of their “gains” is hard to fathom. Look how much Obama’s rating fell with just the announcement of the KSM decision. Wait til it’s in process and Lord forbid that there is really an attack during it. Obama is just a train wreck of his own making. Net strong approval rating now a negative 15, with only 45% viewing his performance favorably. Palin outpolls him at this point. Obama’s only way out would be a robust economic recovery, but, that would take a miracle just short of Jesus reappearing and taking the reins as head of the Fed! And I truly pray that somebody can get Iran to put down its nuke toys before March, otherwise Israel will take them out and the current economic troubles will be a picnic in comparison to oil at multiple hundreds of dollars a barrel. Never, to my knowledge, as such an arrogant, narcissistic, naive, unprepared, incompetent, and ideologically driven person held such awesome duties and responsibilities. I just pray we get thru the next three years in one piece. If the shit really hits the fan, I don’t know who else in Obama’s administration, other than perhaps Hillary, could really man the wheelhouse for him.

I have made the point before that the Republicans should declare Rollback their policy. Everyone should be put on notice that the acts of this administration are viewed as unconstitutional and illegitimate. Nothing signed by these people should be considered binding. Anyone who signs a contract with GM that assumes the permanence or legality of the seizure of the equity in that company by the government and its transfer to the UAW should have no more expectation that they will have that contract honored than if they were a receiver of any stolen goods. Anybody who signs a contract to transfer wealth from the United States in fulfillment of a contract under a carbon offsets scheme such as profits Al Gore can expect the validity of those contracts to be repudiated in American law. Make these people untouchable and their partners will wither.

Also you are correct that -15 in the Rasmussen Daily Poll is significant. It is a new low and a possible breakthrough. If he goes to -20, with strong negatives reaching 45% and strong positives near 25% then something will have to happen. His core support will never go below 25 and probably not much below 28 IMHO. Still if he ever has 45 to 48% strongly opposed, and I think he is headed that way this next 90 days, and the middle are breaking 2 to 1 against him, then the Democrats may want to ease him out before the mid-terms elections. Remember the real bad news will happen in late Summer to late Fall, they may not be able to kick it past the election and may panic at the prospect.

The Administration wants and needs to push their agenda through and will stop at nothing to do so. By stop at nothing I include that they will be willing to lose control of the House if necessary (they can’t lose the Senate in 2010) in order to get their health care and their cap and trade through.

This is because the current situation is the best opportunity they will have to enact programs extremely difficult to reverse. Perhaps cap and trade can be repealed but health care, changing the entire system as it will, can’t be put back in the bottle. Once expectations about health delivery are enacted they will be virtually impossible to repeal.

Consider all the distortions in the current third party payer model. Is there any chance whatsoever to return to fee for service? Or to unlink insurance from employment? No way. People are too used to it.

If the administration were liberal they would want incremental change and the maximum chance of re-election. But they are not liberal. They are radical. To them loss of the House would be a temporary inconvenience well worth it if they can permanently change the character of the American economy.

Same with the status of America in the world. If they destroy American Exceptionalism and weaken the dollar, set in motion a short-term deflation and longer term inflation, hurt our manufacturing base, bind us to international agreements like Copehangen, and change the standards of the Judiciary so that we must adhere to global opinions and international legal decisions, they will have won a victory of monumental proportion that will be irreversible for generations.

It is one thing to pass a bad law. It is another thing to transform the very nature of the economy, corrode our international standing, and make the populace ever more dependent on the government while subordinating us to International Law. Those are structural changes.

It is like introducing a whole new operating system. It might be easy to uninstall a particular piece of software but if a whole new OS is installed, and if it has poison pill provisions that crash the system if changed back, a victory in 2010 will not do the trick.

If Copenhagen, cap and trade, Obamacare, and the corrosion of our military are not stopped before they take hold, it will not be possible to reverse.

Or if you prefer, if the precancerous lesion is not removed, but allowed to take root, by the time 2010 elections arrive and a new congress is sworn in January 2011, the cancer will have metastasized. And by then new healthy habits will be fighting an uphill battle.

Expecting Democrats to “ease Obama out” is fantasy. And even expecting him to lose in 2012 is a long shot. Short of another deep reversal in the economy (unemployment at 12%+ and rising, with rising interest rates) or (God forbid) another attack on the US, you can’t beat somebody with nobody. And looking around at the bench I see nobody at present with a realistic chance of winning.

Yes, I know the arguments. Obama won with a lot of white guilt votes who won’t be there next time. The novelty has worn thin. The economy is bad. The public has seen and understood the excesses of the Administration. Blah Blah Blah.

STOP his program NOW. Don’t console yourself with the wish that it is as easy to fix something as it is to break it. Once broken, things take much longer to rebuild. As the late great coach George Allen used to say (father of the lame ex-Senator) “The future is NOW.”

I’ve read in a couple of places that the Obamanation is in a hurry because if his popularity drops to 30% he will be dead in the water. Considering that the poll I trust the most has him at 38% and falling right now, I wonder if that is true?

Toad, Rasmussen has 0 at 45% approval rate and the strongly disapprove/strongly approve spread is -15 points.
Real Clear Politics has higher figures as they aggregate all sorts of sources (liberal inclusive).
The 0bots base is estimated at 28%, so it is unlikely 0 would go below that figure, unless he screws up purdy bad–a lot of room he has, though. I think that one year from now, he may be actually canned by powers that be, in one form or another… kinda usefulness expiration date.

As for carbon-based robbery, I don’t expect much coming out of Copenhagen but nice speeches and platitudes and a postponement. I damn hope, that is. Yuros have another, backup plan for establishing of a totalitarian paradise, which is Codex Allimentarius. So, they’ll be likely shifting the track.

You say “Why all this wailing and gnashing?’. I’ve wondered myself. Everyone acts as if Obama is some sort of political genious, or a malevalent force. “he’s going to shut down the 2010 elections!!!”, he’s going to do this, he’s going to do that!!

It’s right to be concerned about the destruction they’ll cause, and their reasons are almost irrelevent. But this Administration is the most pitiful, inept bunch I’ve ever seen. If I’ve ever seen a crew that was less likely to evolve into an election-shutting-down dictatorship, I don’t know when. These people have a hard time telling the time.

Everybody thinks Obama is Hell bent on ramming his policies through while he has time. Myself, I think Obama is really interested in one thing, being a “Celebrity”. It doesn’t look like he’s interested in doing a lot of “work”. Traveling around and being Obama is more fun, at least it has been. The party appears to be winding down.

I’ve said it before – if this crew can destroy America forever, then we are so weak it would have happened anyway. They’ll screw things up, and it’ll take a while for the full story to get to enough of the public to affect elections, but there’s no way these people have what it takes to dominate this Country.

The more important problem is this – there’s no easy, painless way out of our circumstances. They’ve been building for years, long before we knew of Obama. The fire erupted at the end of GWBs Admin, and Obama and crew are now pouring gas on the fire. Whoever takes the reins is going to have to have pretty broad support, and integrity that is demonstrated, because they will have to make many hard decisions while maintaining political support. I don’t see that person on the horizon.

Sorry, but when they talk about the “big polluters” and CO2 being a pollutant, they’ve lost me. If they want to discuss real pollution, deforestation, overfishing and overpopulation, I’m here for them.
I’m also over this business about developing nations “catching up”. Perhaps if they’d foregone the socialist or communist-inspired political catastrophes and paid attention to what it was that made the west (including olde-worlde europeans) successful, they’d have been well on the way to being more developed and wealthy right now.
But we had to have the anti-colonialist post-WW2 stuff, didn’t we?

It’s unfortunate. This has the potential to push real environmental research back a long way. The credibility of the entire Environmental Scientific community is potentially at risk. It may not happen, but it could.

The entire Scientific community should be concerned. Americans have generally had a pretty good opinion of scientists, notwithstanding the occasional clashes between the Theological and Scientific communities.

We may make fun of them as a group from time to time, but many also have enormous respect for what they continue to achieve. Their integrity is generally accepted by most. If this goes much deeper the integrity of the scientific community itself, whatever their field of inquiry, may be tarnished to some degree.

It’s fun to watch the MSM avert their eyes and hope it goes away. They’ve become followers of the real newspeople, and once enough pressure builds they’ll have to cover it. They’ll take another hit on their integrity, and I don’t know how many more of those they can stand.

Integrity – an interesting word. We have many “leaders” in all walks of life who think it’s old fashioned and irrelevant. I think it’s about to make a big comeback.

I’ve been rereading Thucydides. So many history changing events happened so fast in the 450-350 BC period that it’s like a crash course in government and human nature.

One characteristic stands out. When individuals see the opportunity to become an oligarch and lord over their fellows then father, brother, city, nation and principles are tossed away like yesterday’s garbage. Deceit, treason and murder are but one more means to a self-glorified end.

People have not changed. The commons either defeats the oligarchs or live as subjects beneath them.

For all of those who love windmill power, the true cost of that power in Texas is about $1.20 per kw compared to about $0.6 per kw for coal. The subsidies are hidden but we all pay them for unreliable power. Very few of the “green technologies” are market competative. And besides the windmills are a visual pollutant. The vistas in West Texas are just crap now and the FING windmills make lots of noise.

We have spent the last 30 years listening to the left shame us about our stewardship of the earth. It is is time they disappear from the stage. Their vision of my life is a GREEN HELL. They are all loons or moon bats; your pick.

All of you with hopes for the 2010 and 2012 are betting against the house. The casino always wins… I remember (Cannoneer?) called it some posts back. The game is rigged and I fully believe him.
They’ve been waiting for almost 60 years, the early generation was patient, these boomers and younglings not so much.

Richard III, King of England will not cede the crown easily. We’ll have to hack them all out from under it.

LotM said “then the Democrats may want to ease him out before the mid-terms elections.”

What pretext could they have for doing such a thing? Unless the president’s health is failing or he resigns amidst a Watergate-sized scandal, I can’t see how Democrats could do this. (But of course we could fill the Grand Canyon with all the things I can’t see or understand.)

And even if Obama did get pressed from office, we’d have a Pres. Biden which is more less the same as having Michael Scott from “The Office” as President. Not an appealing thought.

2. Obama has recently said that jobs and deficits are now a top priority. He and the Dems will propose a big new stimulus bill and call it a jobs bill, and it will be loaded up with the same old crapola for unions and state/local govt, tax increases to pay for it (yesterday Dems start talking about a tax on securities transactions, didn’t take long), with a few small bones for the general public and esp for those who might actually invest. The liberal media will of course run interference for him, and then we’ll get a sense of whether the US public is actually paying attention and has any short-term memory.

3. Cap-and-trade… maybe but not looking likely. The health care thing continues to suck all the oxygen out of Congress and with the economy still worsening and Boxer having pretty much screwed the pooch already, post-Copenhagen and post-CRU-hack it’s a real long shot you’ll hear much about this in 2010.

I agree. The only current Republican politician with the gall/balls to do that is Palin, and she connects with the anger/resentment/payback desire at a deep level. She fought such a battle at the state level, so she has experience as a “rebel” (as a Southerner, I just love that word). Whether she has the rest of what it takes to be President is something a lot of people are now trying to decide. We will see.

The rest of the current Republican presidential aspirants are a bunch of pansies (or, again, substitute other p-word).

Batman – My argument is not wishful thinking. It builds on very real, observable trends. Whether its viable or not has more to do with its implementer, their political skills/savvy, and their passion/energy for the conservative cause. If Washington, Franklin, Jefferson et al had been susceptible to your way of thinking, there would be no USA.

Your last two paragraphs are dead on, with the caveat, as noted in my last comment, that Palin may be that person on the horizon. If not, let’s at least hope she’s fulfilling a role analogous to that of John the Baptist.

agree as regards those pulling the strings, but AGW has tremendous “grass-roots” support that the money-guys have generated but you cannot ignore (a) the scientific ignorance of so many millions of people, and, perhaps more troubling (b) their deep emotional need to believe in disaster and that our society and economy are on the brink of some sort of cosmic retribution. Not just the punishment part of it, but that it is something we brought on ourselves and therefore deserve.

Which I have to think is in some way associated with American guilt over slavery and Jim Crow, and European guilt over colonialism. And ties into PC, the inability of so many to see Maj. Hasan or the 3/11 and 7/7 terrorists for what they were, dithering over Afghanistan, giving KSM his day in court, and a zillion other symptoms of a very deep demoralization.

Back to the money for a second—there are two synods in the Church of AGW Panic—the carbon tax synod and the cap-and-trade synod.

If you actually believe in the dogma, a carbon tax is the only sensible approach (James Hansen said as much). That works fine for the technology companies like GE and Siemens who will sell you wind turbines and network control systems, but doesn’t work at all for the Wall Street/LaSalle Street/hedge fund/ALGore guys who want to trade in a trillion-dollar market for carbon futures.

There is a lot of logic from an economic and national security standpoint, to reduce dependence on foreign (esp. Arab and Venezuela-Ecuador) sources of fossil fuel. Someone should be advancing a serious program for energy independence (really, reduced dependence, full independence neither necessary nor practical in any foreseeable timeframe), based on domestic production and nuclear, aggressive (but not suicidal programs for) renewables, nuclear, etc. This has the potential to split the GE’s and Siemens’s from the AGW movement; they would be perfectly happy to sell into an energy independence market, from the Cap-and-traders who are fundamentally corrupt greedy bastards in a way that transcends even GE et al.

Interestingly, energy independence is a big issue for Sarah Palin, not a surprise coming from Alaska, but this would be a huge winner for the GOP if it only had the brains and moral clarity to embrace it.

S/96; –i agree, our political precedents and traditions need support now as never before since probably the the mid-nineteenth century. the ideal would be for Obama to move to the right and sharply enough to approach the center –at least the left side of center. This would involve going to two-tiers on issues –such as the war before the climate and medical whatnots, the economy before ithe manifestos of reds like Andy Stern (who needs his WH hall pass revoked posthaste and with alacrity).

anyway, Carter himself finally made such a move (via the miserable but better than nothing Moscow Olympics boycott to protest the Afghan invasion, and the installation of Paul Volker, and the firing of some of the marxists in his administration, and so forth), and altho far too late to save his presidency at least he did try to start cleaning up his mess somewhat before the eviction notice.

j willie @98: If we had Washington, Jefferson and Franklin today, I would agree with you. But we don’t.

I think we actually do agree in part. We both know you can’t beat somebody with nobody, and right now we have nobody. It takes a combination of “historical forces” and specific leaders to galvanize deep change. We only have half of the necessary ingredients, if that. After all, several generations have been taught not to think and not to be logical, so the data that persuades you may not have the impact you hope for.

“To relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial society.”

The Canadian UNbomber:

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the
industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
- Maurice Strong,
founder of the UN Environment Programme”http://green-agenda.com/

Why has no one mentioned The Petition Project? It was initiated by Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, who publishes Access To Energy, which was founded many years ago by Petr Beckmann. The Petition urges Congress to reject the Keyoto protocols. That Petition has been signed by 31,486 scientists, 9,029 with PHD’s, who have reviewed a 12-page peer-reviewed scientific paper on “The Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”. This may be why AGW has had tough sledding in the Senate. Art Robinson has stated that he has had no objections to the evidence in the paper, only attacks on him personally. I urge BC folks to Google The Petition Project to see for themselves. Note that Edward Teller was one of the first to sign.